So long as Hastert is Speaker, there'll be no Impeachment, and if he were to take the Presidency, it wouldn't be worth it. But...

The Speaker of the House serves at the sufferance of a majority of the House, not the majority Party.

House Dems make an offer to Iowa Rep. Jim Leach: Bring in 14 more of your Republican colleagues, we'll vote for you as Speaker, and split Committee chairs, governing as a coalition.

Then Impeach Cheney and Bush, with another of the "GOP  in exile" group taking the Speaker slot. (With Leach leaving the House for the Presidency, it'd take one more House Republican at this point.)        

Two recent Wisconsin polls have showed both  Bush and Senator Russ Feingold with substantial leads. Since each poll used the same respondents for both races, the effect of sampling error on relative positions should be dampened.

Milwaukee Journal/Sentinal   Capital Times

Ticketsplitting's always been big here. Tommy Thompson used to rack up huge numbers while our current Gov, Jim Doyle would have similar margins for Attorney General.

The Badger Poll shows the bigger spreads, and most overlap between Bush and Feingold supporters, with 30% of Feingold's supporters backing Bush.

There's no Green in the Senate race,  not a coincidence. There's a Libertarian running for Senate, Arif Khan, but so far he's not had near the profile of the LP's Presidential candidate.

Did some admittedly unscientific polling, at  Natty Nation's Reggae show Saturday night, and Willy StreetFair Sunday. Total sample around 150.

 Found everyone planning to vote, set on Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin, with a lot of uncertainty on the Presidential race.

About 60% set on Kerry, with the rest about evenly split leaning Cobb, Badnarik and Nader. The 3d party leaners are willing to reconsider, with some kind of hint from the Kerry camp that his administration would be better on drug policy than Bush or Clinton.

Sure, the conventional wisdom has it this group doesn't vote, but that's not been the case here for 14 years, changed by my runs for Governor and Sheriff, and my friend Peter Steinberg's 1998 District Attorney race. Kerry cannot take Wisconsin without a huge bulge from Madison.

Alas, Tammy was not at the Fair, I'd hoped to convince her it's time to address the Great midwest Harvest Fest Oct. 2nd, as the best possible surrogate for the Kerry campaign.

"I have a pet goat. He's smarter than my President."